Stacking The Odds In Your Favour

A lot of carp anglers these days tend to have a trip away to a foreign destination every now and then—maybe a lads’ holiday to have some fun and some easy action or the more solitary adventure and the search for unknown monsters! Either way, those will often be one-off trips with little or no previous knowledge of the venues, and getting the best out of them will involve the right tactics and the right mindset. Experience certainly helps and it was Oli Davies who said that I’m one of the few anglers who fishes the whole range of venues, from the tiniest commercial lakes to the biggest of the wild inland seas and rivers! All of them require slightly different approaches in order to get a decent result, so here’s five very different sessions on different venues and how I got the best out of them. 

VENUE 1: CASSIEN
Day sessions only

Lesson Learnt: You don’t need to use a lot of bait—just use good bait
It’s one of the most common questions I get asked these days: ‘Hi, I’m going to Cassien in April, August, November, etc., where will the fish be and where should I start?’

It’s an impossible question, as I simply have never known where the fish will be on that lake and most times they aren’t where they were the year before. It’s all about being prepared to work to get on them, mainly through trial and error. Normally the fish don’t show much during the day and so to start with I pick an area (normally where I see least other anglers) and just give it a go. Sometimes it works but most times it doesn’t, so it’s a case of then trying another area, and then another, until you can discount several parts of the lake and eventually you find them. It can be a lot of hard work but most of the time success is down to the amount of work you are prepared to put in. 

Timing the day sessions can really help. You can be on the lake from around 4 a.m. but it’s a killer doing that every day and many times the most productive periods were in the afternoon and evenings. Because of this, I would often lie in, get to the lake for about 11 a.m. and have the baits in place and fresh for the prime feeding times. What can happen if you have baited up too early, is it gives the catfish and bream a chance to take over the spots and potentially ruin them for the day. 

I choose a mobile approach, so I don’t use a lot of bait—1kg of boilies does me for a day for four rods and that’s always worked for me on Cassien at any time of year. 10 to 15 boilies around each rod, fishing for one bite at a time. Quality food is the important aspect—you don’t need much bait out there to catch as long as it’s food that the fish really want. I like big baits too, single or double 24mms have always worked well there and I feel that it’s linked to the carp’s natural foods, which at Cassien tends to be crayfish and swan mussels. 

Our most recent Cassien session was a couple of years ago with some German friends and we tried all of our favourite spots around the lake until we eventually found most of the fish holed up near the barrage at the top of the North Arm. From there, all four of us caught fish over the next few days, and although it’s an area of the lake that I’ve rarely fished in the past, it’s where they were on this occasion, and once we were on them, we caught them.

VENUE 2: ECHO POOL
The Top Three 

Lesson Learnt: Don’t rest on your laurels—work the swim
Small lakes can be really tricky. You know the fish are never far away but they are on guard as soon as the lines go out. Echo Pool is one of the smallest I’ve fished but it does hold carp to immense sizes and I fancied my chances of seeing one or two of them. 

A few years ago I had a chance to fish there in the early spring, just after the owner had fished for around twelve days. This was just prior to the lake opening up fully to customers for the year. I already had plans in my head, and with only five carp out during the previous twelve days it wasn’t going to be easy, but the first part of any fishing plan for me is bait, and I wanted to be just a little different to what the fish would normally see. Hookbaits were 20mm Cultured Wafters to give off plenty of attraction and they were fished over 15mm dumbbells just to be a little different to the normal round balls. These were fished along
with hemp, which I have a lot of faith in wherever I go!

As is often the case, the fish try to get as far away from anglers as possible and the far margins opposite the only swim on the lake was undoubtedly where they wanted to be. Spreading three rods out along the far bank, just at the bottom of the far marginal shelf, I had the sort of start I could have only dreamt of: a double take inside an hour with a 55lb common on one rod and the lake’s largest mirror on the other rod at 74lb! 

I got the rods back out and by the following morning I’d had a further two mirrors of 58lb and 61lb. It was an amazing start but that was when I had to keep on top of things and start really thinking. It would’ve been easy to sit back on that early success and think that everything was sussed, but what happened was those spots soon dried up as the fish became very wary of them. It’s something that happens a lot on small lakes with low stock but it’s not the end of everything. 

What I did was to move all of the baits just slightly, maybe a few yards up or down the slope, left or right—and also bait other likely areas but without having hookbaits there, which I often find to be really beneficial in the long run. 

After a couple of smaller fish the next big one was Barrel at 70lb 12oz, which came from a bait moved to a new spot in slightly deeper water. That made it two of the big three mirrors in the lake but on the very last day I made it a hat-trick with a fish called Gordon, which was normally over 70lb but this time down a little at 69lb. That one came on a spot that I had been baiting steadily for two or three days but hadn’t actually fished up until that point. 

All of the fish still came from the far margin but by working at it, moving baits and eeding other spots I was able to keep the action coming and bank the three biggest mirrors in the lake.

VENUE 3: PARCO DEL BRENTA
The Big Build Up

Lesson Learnt: Little and often can win the race
I like Italy as a country and Parco Del Brenta was one venue that I’d heard a lot about. It holds a lot of carp and they are hungry fish—that’s what I’d been told so I was hoping for plenty of action and the chance of a big fish or two. 

I was on a lake exclusive booking with the bailiff, Nicholas, and all the other anglers were German and all really nice guys. Perhaps my edge came from the fact that this was going to be a session where only casting and baiting from the bank was allowed and I was fairly sure that I would’ve done more of this in the past than the others—although they were all very good anglers.

The start was fairly slow for me—I think I had a 20 and a 30 in the first day or two. My main problem was that my swim had a lot of water and a lot of options but fish were showing all over the place and rather than chase them around I decided that I’d try to lure them into me. 

On the fairly featureless bottom I chose one area at 70yds that I could reach and bait comfortably—and that’s what I did: bait consistently and accurately every day to build the swim up. After a few days it was noticeable that I was the only one who was baiting consistently every day; others would bait heavily and then leave it for 2 or 3 days and some would just cast at showing fish with bags etc. But the consistent baiting for an hour every day with boilies, pellets and particles really started to work and every day/night I would receive action, starting off with 1 or 2 bites and building up to 3, 4, 5, 6—up to 7 or 8 runs from soon after the bait was introduced.

It wasn’t long before I caught the first fifty and then several more came along. The best evening produced two sixties and three fifties in the space of just a few hours! The Parco fish love food and giving it to them frequently and accurately meant that the fish would keep returning to the spot. As always, it’s about giving the fish what they want, where they want it, and sometimes it just comes down to out-baiting everyone else.

VENUE 4: SWEDEN
The Wild, Scaly Mirrors

Lesson Learnt: Be 100% confident in everything you do
Sweden isn’t known for its monster carp, but it is famous for its scaly beauties and that’s what inspired me to load up the van and head for Scandinavia! 

Preparation is so important on any trip, whether it’s just down the road or a thousand-odd miles as this one was. To turn up somewhere and realise that you’ve not got the right stuff or you’ve left something behind is just a recipe for disaster. It’s not the time to start messing about or trying new things—it’s the time to go in with confidence that has worked time and time again. It always starts with bait for me, and of all the baits I’ve used, Scopex Squid is the one that has just worked everywhere I’ve ever taken it. These were old, wild fish that had lived in the lake for well over thirty years and they didn’t get to see a lot of anglers bait and I was sure they hadn’t seen Scopex Squid before but I was as sure as I could be that it would be to their liking.

As usual, location is just as important. Much of the lake is out-of-bounds but the area I could fish looked really carpy and the rods were spread as far and as wide as possible to try and pin them down. It was a large, reed-fringed bay where I found most of the low stock of carp to be hiding out. The first night produced a really stunning mirror of 34lb 12oz, one of the A-Team of the lake and that was already ‘job done’ for me. 

But of course it was just the start and more rods were honed in on the reedy bay along with more bait, and although I only had a few days at the lake the action came steadily with a string of wild and beautiful Swedish carp. 

Carp fishing can be incredibly simple if you get the basics right. This was a lake that I knew nothing about but I had a bait that I was 100% confident in. I quickly found the fish and the combination of those two things meant I was straight into action and when you only have a few days—and it might be the only time you ever get to fish that water—time is always at a premium and so always try to tip the odds in your favour.

VENUE 5: RAINBOW LAKE
The Waiting Game

Lesson Learnt: Keep focused and don’t lose your head
I had many trips to Rainbow Lake from 2004 onwards and many nice fish in those years. I could pick numerous examples from those times but I’ll go back to a one week session in my favourite Swim 18 at the big fish venue. 

The nature of fishing Rainbow is that you have to book a swim a long time in advance and that’s your swim for the trip come what may. Swim 18 is a simple enough swim with an island running parallel to the bank at around 90yds with several fallen trees, which is where the carp like to hang out, when they are there—but they are not always there!

Knowing what swim you will be fishing in advance is not to everyone’s liking but it suited me. I was able to plan for baiting and have the rods all rigged up ready to go. Fishing to the snags is all about hit-and-hold tactics with very strong gear, so everything was prepared and planned in advance but of course the fish have a mind of their own and the first couple of days passed by, nothing happened. In the warm, still conditions they had congregated in the shallower parts of the lake. These are the times when you have to have a strong mind and a certain amount of patience, after all, a long session is a marathon and not a sprint. 

The baits had been presented perfectly from the boat and so there was no point in moving them and there was also no point in putting in more bait on top of what was already there—maybe just a few here and there to add some freshness but no more. 

From Saturday around to Thursday it was dead but then my fortunes changed and a big fresh southwesterly started blowing big frothy waves into my bank and the fish started to follow it! 

Thursday morning a 56lb mirror was the first to slip up as it found the baits that had been there lying in wait for several days. The action started to come steadily, the next few hours the commons arrived and there were a couple of forties and a thirty—but then came the twelve hours that totally turned the trip around! 

Three takes and three commons of 60lb 8oz, 63lb 4oz and 67lb 4oz! Don’t get me wrong, there are far bigger carp residing in Rainbow Lake but results come in all shapes and sizes and the feeling I had after not knowing if I was even going to catch or not that week was quite special. In the past I might have put too much bait out when things weren’t happening or even more likely I could’ve changed tactics and tried different areas and totally lost track of what I was doing and moved further away from catching anything. As it turned out, the fish weren’t there to begin with and there wasn’t much I could do about it other than make sure that I was still fishing as effectively as possible if and when they did turn up. 

Undoubtedly experience does help a lot and I’ve been lucky enough to have fished so many waters in so many different situations and there is normally something I can refer back to and I have some idea of what I have to do, but the basics will hold true in any given situation: get yourself on the fish with a good bait and rig set-up and you are almost there. Of course there will always be tweaks that you can make to improve things but if fish are out there feeding, there is always a way to catch them.